


(Shake Off the) Weight

by agenthill



Series: And, In Sign of Ancient Love, Their Plighted Hands They Join [3]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, F/F, Introspection, Jewish Themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-05
Updated: 2016-09-06
Packaged: 2018-08-13 05:48:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7964827
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agenthill/pseuds/agenthill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A look at what drives Fareeha and Angela; the ways in which they are different, and the ways in which they are same.  How do they define themselves?  How can they justify the things they have done?  How do they sleep at night?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hinterlands](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hinterlands/gifts).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have the second chapter of this written already, and I'm going to post it tomorrow, but I felt like uploading more than one chapter at a time was... totally unnecessary. If you absolutely can't wait, (unlikely) it's on my [tumblr](http://agenthill.tumblr.com/post/149988061216/shake-off-the-weight).
> 
> Also, I forgot to say this before the last fic I posted, HUGE shoutout to the lads in the overfutch/egging sheesh/WrinkleMercyRedemptionArc/Ganymede Stans Anonymous/tits out for ana and less beans group chats. They save my ass every damn day, both literally in game and figuratively out of it. Without them, I wouldn't be posting this right now.

Pharah cries for justice, but it has not always been so.  To seek justice implies that one has been wronged, or has seen wrong, and knows enough to seek to correct it, to rectify a situation by meting out punishment or by providing some means of compensation.  The pursuit of justice requires something more than an inborn sense of fairness, some awareness of what is right, and what is wrong.  The pursuit of justice requires strength, and determination.  The pursuit of justice requires a cause.  Fareeha did not always have these things, as she does now.

(As a child, Fareeha thought it unfair that other children could live their whole lives in one place, need not be uprooted every few months, forced to live in a strange new city where no one but their mother knew their language.  She thought it unfair that, for so long, her mother was the only one with whom she could speak in her native tongue.  To her young eyes, it seemed as if everyone around her had many people with whom they were close, and she herself was restricted to just the one.  When others spoke to her mother, and especially when they did so in the strange round sounds of English, she found herself jealous—why could they not speak to someone else, why must they take her mother from her, why must they make her move from one place to the next, with no thought spared for her own desires?  The fate of the world was at stake, but she was a child, and entitled to selfishness, now and again.  She found her situation to be unfair, and it was so.)

By questioning the fairness of things, Fareeha came to know of good and evil, of right and wrong, came to define herself along ideological lines, and many of these early notions of what the world _ought_ to be have continued to inform Pharah in her pursuit of justice, even if she has long since grown beyond such simplistic thinking.  While it may not be that the world is so simple as her mother made it seem when she was a child, there has always been much about Ana Amari worthy of adoring, her moral compass included.

(As she grew older, it was easy for Fareeha to understand why others had sought to steal a moment of her mother’s time.  Ana had something that most people lacked, a true sense of purpose—and with it, a charismatic self-assurance.  To many, Ana was able to play the role of mother, because her sense of purpose enabled her to be almost entirely confident in her answers, making her advice deeply comforting, like a parent answering their child’s questions.  At the time, Fareeha did not—could not—understand how it was that her mother was such a whole person.  Longing to be the same, Fareeha sought to emulate her, to become like Ana by acting like her, rather than by finding a purpose of her own.)

By becoming a soldier, a true Amari, sworn to protect the innocent, Fareeha found strength, learned to be self-reliant, always, and she remains grateful for what her years in the military taught her.  However, she was not, then, complete as she is now; instead, she existed only in the shadow of her mother, only as a last name.  Fareeha became Amari, name and rank, nothing further, whereas now she is something more, something beyond the name her mother gave her, and the name whose legacy she sought to uphold.

(It was not until it became a legacy, in the truest sense, Ana dead—or near enough, a purposeless husk of her former self—that Fareeha was able to begin to grasp what it was that had always made Ana great.  Not great deeds, not a code of ethics, not confidence, but purpose.  Purpose which those who had sought to use Overwatch for their own political gain had stolen from her.  Purpose which those whom Ana had risked her very life to protect had robbed her of, wearing her down day by day until her own daughter hardly recognized her.  This, Fareeha knew, was more than simply unfair.  This was a betrayal, this was the theft of something which might never be recovered.  This was more than a petty conflict, this was more than something which could be neatly defined as right or wrong, and then treated as such.  This was an affront to all those who would see good deeds rewarded.  Her mother, and indeed, most everyone in Overwatch, had given all they could to save the very people who would see them destroyed.  While not a wrong which Fareeha could right, she knew, more deeply and clearly than she had ever known anything before, that this was an injustice.)

From her mother’s death, from the fall of first Overwatch, Pharah gained that which her mother has lost, something which, now, enables her to become whom she needs to be: a sense of purpose.  She knows, from seeing injustice done on such a scale, that justice is what defines her, that it is justice that will motivate her to fight for what she believes to be right.  Fareeha may have fairness, an innate sense of right and wrong, Amari, name and rank, may have strength, and determination, but it is Pharah, the woman she becomes in the aftermath, the ideal she embodies on the battlefield, who is able to put that knowledge to use, who is able to make difficult decisions based upon what she knows to be right, who is able to protect the innocent like Lieutenant Amari never could, because she is sure of herself, now, sure of her decisions as anyone reasonably can be.

A desire for justice guides Pharah, enables her to find purpose and finally, finally, be content in herself, to define herself not in relation to her mother, or to any other, but inwardly.  Only when she becomes Pharah does Fareeha feel complete.  Only when she has become Pharah can Fareeha rest easy in the knowledge that she can do what it takes to protect those she loves, can protect Angela, her mother, her squadron.  Only in becoming Pharah are Fareeha’s fears that she will be left alone finally cast aside.  She can make the decisions necessary to protect those she loves, has the strength to fight for them, because she has at last found a cause.   

Pharah cries for justice, and justice will reign.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ending on a shitty pun, because why not.
> 
> Title is from... 1D... AGAIN... I said I wouldn't but here I am. The song in question is "Alive."
> 
> I'll be uploading chapter two tomorrow, feat. Jewish Angela!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm posting this a little early because Skitch (Hinterlands) [remixed a fic for this verse](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7969192/chapters/18228775) (HOLY SHIT) and I'm just... overwhelmed with excitement. You should all read it because it is _beautiful_ , and they are a wonderful author, whom I love dearly.
> 
> So without further ado: chapter two.

Angela Ziegler is an ethical person.  So she tells herself, and so she must believe in order to continue as she does, arbiter of death and life for so many (many years, many people, many hopes, wishes, dreams).  This is not the only thing Angela believes, but it is one of the things she believes most strongly.  She is an ethical person; she does what must be done to save lives, even when the cost (personal, financial, otherwise) is great.

Often, she faces criticism for her decisions, from patients, from the UN, from the public.  Who is she to try and raise the dead, who is she to decide when a person may rest, who is she to play at being god?  In a way, the questions are not so different from those every doctor faces, at one point in their career. 

(In a way, they could not be more different, for most doctors are asked this only once, and she has made a career of it, has transformed the sacred into the mundane, turned miracles to routine, and in doing so made it all the easier for others to waive away that which is divine.  She has done so because it is what her god wills her to do, because it is halakha, but this does not pardon her transgression.)

As a head of surgery, she was expected to decide which patients needed to be operated upon first, who could afford to wait and who would could not; she did not always make the right call, and sometimes waiting patients died—now, she need not worry about losing anyone.  She is a doctor, it is her duty to save lives.  To bring back the dead is merely an extension of such, a khumra she placed upon herself.  When she resurrects, some say she crosses a boundary, commits an abomination, and she hears their words, understands their fear, but this is her _duty,_ and she will do more than is asked of her, more than some think is right, if it means she can save just one life.

(A khumra is meant to avoid guilt, but her soul is heavy nonetheless.  Knowing that she makes the right decision does not erase the memories of haunted eyes, of terrible screams.  Knowing that she makes the right decision does not undo what harm she has inflicted.)

“First, do no harm,” they told her, in medical school, and she tries, she _tries,_ but sometimes one must inflict some harm to work towards a greater good.   When she saved Genji, he suffered for it, and terribly, but he lived, he yet lives, and that he is happy now is proof enough that she was right to act as she did, that she will be right when she makes such a decision again (and it _is_ when, not if). In the short term, she hurt him, but it was so that he might be as he is now, alive and happy. It is not so different, she thinks, from re-breaking a bone so that it can set properly.

(Ana asked her, once how she lives with these decisions, how she is able to sleep at night after playing god as she does. Angela answered honestly, then—she never plays _god_ —but thinks, in retrospect, that her words were poor, and the message lost.  What sounded like a god complex is merely piety.)

Who are soldiers to question her motives?  She has heard it argued that killing in war is harag, not ratzah, but even a justified killing is still blood spilt, and she has seen the way soldiers like Reyes count their kills, the pride in their eyes as they recount the deaths of their enemies—they delight in battle, in bloodshed; she never could. She celebrates victories alongside her comrades, but never does she celebrate the killing, only rejoices in the fact that they have survived, that they have saved lives, that she will live long enough to save yet others.

(Still, she does not think herself above them, for all that she finds them in the wrong. At the end of the day, McCree is all bluster, hiding his guilt, while Ana prays as often as she is able, and Reinhardt has recited the Mourner’s Kaddish more times than any should in their lifetime.  In the end, they know what is right; who is Angela to tell them, when she herself has done so many things beshogeg.)

What Angela has done she has always, always believed to be right, at least in the moment; this will never change.  She has considered, as much as she as able in the time afforded to her, every aspect of a case before she acts, but this does not mean Angela is infallible.  No one (no human) can be expected to be without error, but intent does not excuse those sins she has committed when she believed herself to be in the right.  No human—living or otherwise, herself included—can forgive her for what she has done.  As best she is able, she acts in accordance with the mitzvot, and she works to walk the path of teshuva.  She only hopes it will be enough.

(At night, after she says the Shema, she sees Reyes’ face appear before her, demanding an explanation.  She tries to explain to him pikuach nefesh, the preservation of life above all other things.  Any harm done, she had believed, would be worth his life; how could she have anticipated what he has become?  Her actions may torment him, but her intent was pure.  To save a life is the most important thing she can do, for life is the most precious gift of all.  How could she have known, then, that she was not saving his life, but condemning him?)

Angela Ziegler is an ethical person.  She has sinned, and likely will again, but only in attempting to do what is right and proper.  At the end of the day, she contents herself with this, tells herself that those whose lives she has transformed against their will were only altered with the best of intents.  This is all she can do, and she cannot bear to think that she is anything less than what she has said she is, because if she is not, she is not deserving of the love of Fareeha, who has never been anything but just, and good.  If not, she is not deserving of her callsign, by which she has so long defined herself.  If not, she does not know how she could define herself—not by those she loves, not by whom others believe her to be, not by anything.  

Angela Ziegler is an ethical person, she needs to believe that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you need any explanation on any of the terminology here, hit me up on [tumblr](http://agenthill.tumblr.com), or comment, I suppose. It all seems pretty contextually obvious to me, but I grew up hearing about these terms so obviously I'm not the best judge of that.
> 
> I'm working on the next fic in this series, a multichapter one from Fareeha's point of view about Ana('s return) and how it changes things. Hopefully chapter one will be up within the next four days, but I'm pretty busy so I can't guarantee anything. I'll try, at the very least.
> 
> That's all for now, thanks for reading!


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